Cygni is a tremendous evolution of the shoot ’em up genre

Don’t let the Konami logo at the start fool you – Cygni: All Guns Blazing is very much an indie game, albeit one being released globally by the Japanese publisher.

You’d be fooled for thinking otherwise, of course. Just a brief glimpse at it in action may be enough to convince you that a lot of money has been thrown at it, when in reality the game – which started off as a three-person team and grew to around eight developers – has just been punching well above its weight, in the best way.

If it’s passed you by until now, Cygni was developed by KeelWorks, a Scotland-based team led by brothers Meher and Nareg Kalenderian and co-founder Helen Saouma. The game is an attempt to bring something new to the shoot ‘em up – a genre that was once synonymous with Konami back in the ‘80s and ‘90s – and it passes with flying colours.

At its core, Cygni is by definition a vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up. Over the course of its seven stages, the game’s All Guns Blazing subtitle comes into its own, with a near-constant onslaught coming from both airborne and ground-based enemies.

It doesn’t take long to realise that there’s so much more to Cygni than you’d expect from a typical shoot ‘em up, however. Those six stages are much longer than in other schmups, and they’re not really designed for you to avoid every bullet thrown at you. This is as much as game about juggling your resources as it is about blowing everything up.

Your ship is armed with two separate energy bars, one for your shields and one for firepower. As you destroy enemies, small energy collectibles float around the stage, and picking them up will top up your shields by default.

However, by hitting the shoulder buttons you can distribute energy from your shields to your weaponry, giving you more powerful attacks (with the obvious caveat that you’re giving up health as a result).

If you’re skilful enough you can eventually end up with both bars full (by manually filling up your firepower bar then collecting more health pick-ups) but more often than not – especially on harder difficulties – you’ll be choosing which bar to prioritise each time you encounter a new scenario.

When confronted with a boss, for example, do you take your chances and weaken your shield to boost your arsenal, in an attempt to beat them quicker? Or, if you expect to take some hits, do you play it safe and wear them down?

The choices become more complex with the ability to upgrade and customise your weaponry. While at first you’ve got a straightforward air shot and ground shot, before long you’re unlocking lasers, homing shots and the like.

You can even customise your shot patterns – by moving some guns to the sides if you expect more enemies to approach from an angle, for example – and store numerous patterns in your loadout so you can toggle between them at the touch of a button.

While on Easy the game can absolutely be played by just taping down the fire button and navigating around, it’s on harder difficulties, where these other strategies have to be considered, where Cygni comes into its own.

This would all make for a compelling game even if the visuals didn’t hold up, but Cygni might be the best-looking shoot ‘em up we’ve ever played. The background detail is tremendous, the sheer number of bullets, enemies and fragments flying around make Resogun look like Space Invaders, and when the action gets at its hottest the explosions flying around make the screen look like the sky over Disneyland at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“This would all make for a compelling game even if the visuals didn’t hold up, but Cygni might be the best-looking shoot ‘em up we’ve ever played.”

There’s a satisfying shudder effect when you take out a slightly bigger enemy, but there are often so many enemies that the whole screen is banging around all over the place (don’t worry, the shudder can be turned off), as a barrage of explosions pepper the screen and your ears are treated to a lavish collection of bangs, booms and pops. There aren’t enough pops in game explosions, if you ask me. The whole thing is an assault on your senses, in the best possible way.

Those pyrotechnics (yes, including the pops) aren’t the only thing your ears are treated to in Cygni. The game’s orchestral soundtrack is an absolute wonder, once again defying its ‘indie game’ definition by delivering something up there with the very best the medium has to offer. It helps when your uncle Vatche is an award-winning composer, of course.

The team’s previous non-gaming pedigree shines through in general. Co-founder Nareg Kalenderian spent time working at Pixar and was a VFX artist on Hollywood movies, which explains why the game’s CGI cutscenes are so fantastic. Art director Helen Saouma also has a background in feature films and television – both have carried their talents to the medium of video games exceptionally.

It would have been astonishing if Cygni had launched without any issues at all, and sure enough there are a few niggles that can hopefully be addressed post-launch. The upgrade system, which is a crucial part of the game in higher difficulties, is presented through a very confusing upgrade screen which takes some time to get your head around. This could be labelled a lot better to make it clearer what each option does.

The game also doesn’t force a tutorial on the player. In most circumstances this would be a good thing but Cygni has so many bespoke gameplay mechanics – the energy transfer system, the homing lock, toggling between firing patterns – that players who don’t take the time to manually select the useful tutorial section may find themselves with a frustrating first hour or two as Normal difficulty eats them alive.

Take these into account, however, and Cygni is an absolute must-have – not only for anyone interested in shoot ‘em ups, but for those craving constant action in their games in general. KeelWorks has knocked it out of the park with its first attempt, and the best thing we can say about it is that had we never mentioned that it was an indie game, there’s likely no way you would have known.